Sunday, 14 July 2013

The Kingdom Church

Lord,
give me strength! It’s clearly something I lack, because I just didn’t have the
stamina to stay to the end of the service at today’s church, the Kingdom Church, which meets in an airless, windowless upper room in what I think used to be a
cinema in Great Junction Street. Despite the ministry’s ambitious desire to
build beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities by 2015, the present accommodation
leaves much to be desired – hot water in the ladies’ room, a toilet cistern
that fills up quick enough to let every user flush, and a layout that doesn’t
make you worry about fire egress to name just three things. Yes, to echo a link
sent to me earlier in the week, the building of a mega-church all boils down to toilets and parking.

Call
me a wimp, but after three hours and twenty minutes – yes, that’s three whole hours and another twenty
minutes on top – I had to give up and make my escape. And you know what?
The service was still going strong as I snuck out. It seemed fitting, therefore,
that Dr Jennifer Irungu’s sermon urged us to “put on the face of an ox”, a
beast with stamina if ever there was one. I didn’t join in when everyone else
touched their faces and declared that they were putting on the face of an ox in
Jesus’ name, so maybe that’s why I found myself failing.

I
should explain about the ox face thing. It would seem that Bishop Climate
Irungu, the husband of today’s preacher, has declared 2013 the year of
supernatural anointing, and that July is the seventh month and seven is the
number of completion. Therefore many things previously incomplete are to be
completed this month. Furthermore, the year is to be divided into four quarters
in which the faithful are to assume the characteristics of the living creatures
witnessed in Ezekiel 1 – man, lion, ox and eagle. We’ve had three months of
man, three months of lion and now we are to put on the face of an ox until the
end of September. Still with me? There’s more to come.

Women
are like oxen (charmed, I’m sure) because women are strong, we can multitask
and we already operate like God (!), whereas men, poor creatures, require all
the strength they can get. But we must all put on the face of an ox and ask for
divine strength. Once you have the face of an ox you will become an abundance
magnet, a favour magnet, a miracle magnet, a money magnet and a wealth magnet.
Amen? Someone say Amen?

I
think you get the picture. All of Dr Jennifer’s sermon was amplified to
genuinely painful decibel levels as she screamed her way through this kind of
stuff for roughly an hour. In fact, everyone who used a microphone, except for
the woman who read out the announcements and the very thin girl with the
extraordinary high heeled shoes who sang one of the songs, held it far too close
to their lips, so that every plosive and sibilant was an assault on the
eardrum. It was actually physically painful – seriously, I’m talking breach of
health and safety law here – and even after the already unbelievably loud
singing they still cranked it up further when Dr Jennifer began to preach, two
hours and ten minutes in.

The
first two hours had been filled with lots of hypnotic repetitive singing, led by a deafening
contralto, followed by intercessory prayers, then lots more singing (more upbeat this time with African gospel rhythms, but with no lyrics on the projector and the words indistinguishable in the
feedback and reverb, so joining in was possible only if you knew the songs
already), and then holy communion, which came in a little sealed plastic tub a bit like this, with a wafer in a separate blister pack on top, and then a bit more singing
and a pep talk on tithing. The tone was exuberant, verging on the hysterical,
with people up on their feet dancing, whooping, waving huge purple flags and
shaking a tambourine.

So,
three hours and ten minutes in, Dr Jennifer had finished her sermon and was
ready to move on to the anointing. People came forward, arms open, to be
touched on the forehead. Three of them fell down and were laid on the floor and
covered with red cloths until they could recover their strength – oxen
temporarily felled – but I’m afraid I just couldn’t take any more of it. I was
hot and tired and hungry and my ears were ringing, and continued to ring for
about an hour afterwards. How much cochlear damage did I do by staying as long
as I did?

The
Kingdom Church describes itself as “Committed To A Big Mission”, “By becoming
the best and the biggest church organization in the world.” That’s quite an
ambition, and clearly they have some enthusiastic followers who will help them
to build their educational facilities, elderly care homes, gyms, Christian
restaurants and all the rest. Who says Christianity has anything to do with
humility when there are empires to be forged?

Well,
good luck to them. If the comments I found online about Bishop Climate and Dr
Jennifer Irungu have any foundation in truth (and I won’t repeat them here lest
I court a libel suit) then they will reap as they sow. Meanwhile, Jennifer
definitely gets a fashion prize for her daring yellow suit with sparkly gold
fishtail pleats and not-quite-matching gold shoes. They eclipsed even the
skinny singer’s white patent wedge heels, and hats off to her for standing up
in those for two hours without falling over.

5 comments:

Not that I noticed, but they were selling the Bishop's booklets (at least a dozen titles laid out on a table by the door) and urging people to buy the DVDs of their recent "powerful" conference. And the tithing pep talk included chanting, "Tithing ... is a form of worship!" more times than was strictly necessary to impart the information. Matthew 21: 12-13 comes to mind, but I wouldn't be so rude as to knock over their tables; the inconspicuous departure is much more my style.

Interestingly, when I search on Google for "Church Edinburgh" the whole of the first page of results is charismatic churches of one sort or another. Google will be tailoring what they show in their results to my interests, but even so, it shows how non internet savvy the rest of the church is by comparison.

So you see what I mean about Jennifer's amazing yellow outfit! There was a chap snapping away throughout the service; he'd have snapped me too but I didn't want to be photographed and I'm very glad he honoured my wishes.

Just done the Google search on "church Edinburgh" and what I got was: Kings, Destiny, Community, Life, Centrepoint, Charlotte Chapel, St Columba’s Free, Lighthouse, Crossroads, Grace, St Mark’s Unitarian.Plus, of course, one of those advertisements for "Christian Mingle" that dog my every step through cyberspace. Christian Mingle ... I ask you! Shows how non-savvy Google is about me.